Legal Blog

In the spirit of Halloween, this post will be about the ghostly subject of phantom marks.
Generally, a trademark application filed in the United States may seek registration of only one mark. This is not always the case in other countries. For example, in the United...

Russian fans at the men’s preliminary round ice hockey game between Russia and Slovakia at the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games. (Photo: REUTERS/Laszlo Balogh)
The English word “fan” — in the sports context — of course comes from “fanatic.” But in Russian, the word is болельщик...

When the justices hear oral argument next Monday in Merit Management Group v FTI Consulting, they will finally be turning their attention to one of this century’s most prominent disputes about how to read the Bankruptcy Code.
The case involves limits on the so-called “avoidance” powers...

The new president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, LaGrange, Ga., Police Chief Lou Dekmar, made an historic apology for his agency’s role in a lynching of a black man. He sees the need to build trust with minority communities is the most...

For the first-ever First Mondays live show, we traveled to the University of Michigan (go Blue), where we were joined by alumna Leah Litman. From Ann Arbor, we ring in the November sitting, which we think is somewhat more exciting than the popular coverage might...

The security guard of the future is an all-seeing robot, endowed with laser scanning, thermal imaging, 360-degree video and sensors for all kinds of signals, McClatchy Newspapers reports. Dozens of the self-propelled, wheeled robots are already on patrol in places like the Golden 1 Center...

A sweeping gun trace report in Chicago showed nearly one quarter of guns recovered at crime scenes over a four-year period came from just 10 area businesses, the Chicago Tribune reports. Suburban Sporting Goods made a startling leap into the top 10 list, said the...

Two weeks ago, Justice Elena Kagan called Justice Thurgood Marshall “the greatest lawyer of the 20th century.”
Here’s another one for the folks at Guinness: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the “most important woman lawyer in the history of the republic,” doing for women’s rights what...

Declaring the opioid crisis a national public health emergency, President Trump said: “Nobody has seen anything like what’s going on now.” He was both right and wrong, the Associated Press reports. This is the most widespread and deadly drug crisis in the nation’s history, but...

This morning the Supreme Court issued orders from its conference last Friday, but the justices did not add any new cases to their merits docket for the term.
The justices declined to take up the property-rights question presented by a California case, 616 Croft Avenue v....